I huffed a laugh that fogged and hung. “Helpful.”
“She cares that you are both here,” Nova amended, softer. “The Hollows likes balance. She does not. She has always preferred a lever to a beam.”
Stella’s mouth curved. “So we take away the levers.”
“Or make them squeak when used,” Bella offered, already moving to the edge of the hexagon to check the line where the veil met air. “I can lace chimes along the seam. If she presses again, the sound will travel to the farthest region in warning.”
“That’s a distance measure I can respect,” Twobble said gravely, unwrapping the lollipop with the ceremony it deserved.
Gideon dragged a gloved hand down his face, then set both palms back on the table, making his intentions as formal as the room required.
“This is what I meant,” he said to me, to all of us. “She will not let quiet be quiet once the pieces she hates begin to talk to each other. She will push until the Hollows itself has to choose whether to remain neutral or enforce its neutrality.”
“And if it enforces?” Keegan asked.
“Then we discover who is allowed to remain,” Gideon said. His eyes found mine. “And who is not.”
I hated that a slice of fear tasted like relief. If the Hollows had to choose, I believed it would choose goodness. But even neutral ground gets bored with being polite now and again.
“Maeve,” Luna said softly, and the sound of my name in her voice was the furthest thing from boredom. “You were right to ask him. And he was right to say yes. The Hollows can host a vow. It can also honor one.”
Gideon flinched almost imperceptibly, as if the word vow had a weight his spine had not consented to hold. I watched the way his shoulders adjusted. I watched the way Keegan watched me watching him.
“Do it soon,” Nova said, and the room leaned forward, interested. “Before she can spin the weather into something worse than knives.”
Skonk held up the kettle, from which rose the most hopeful steam I’d ever seen in winter. “Tea?”
“Yes,” we all said, because when the world trembles, you pick the rituals that remind your bones of what peace means.
We drank standing, cups warming our gloves, the bramble mule slurping from a saucer. The air loosened a fraction more in my lungs.
Gideon didn’t drink. He watched the doorway, listened to the absence of ice as if absence had a song.
“She’ll come again,” he said.
“Then let her learn to knock,” Stella replied, all velvet and vein. “I have not been around for this long to be bossed around by someone with ill intentions and bad manners.”
I pretended to be comforted by the joke and discovered I mostly was. Humor was a protection spell if you let it be. Twobble leaned into my hip, his shoulder warm through layers, and offered me the cherry from his pocket as a talisman. I took it. It tasted like summer, defiant and sweet and completely out of place.
Good.
Let out-of-place be our banner.
“Are we staying?” Bella asked, half-fox, nose tilted to catch any new temper in the air.
“Long enough to make her bored,” Nova said. “We don’t run from the first test.”
Keegan nodded. “We set our terms.”
“And chimes,” Bella added.
“And tea,” Skonk said.
“And glitter,” Twobble put in, because he never misses a chance for it.
“And truth,” Luna said, the last word a stitch pulled through cloth and fastened.
I looked at Gideon again and saw that the worry hadn’t left his face. It had rearranged itself into readiness, which was as close to bravery as some men let themselves have when the world is counting. He caught me looking and did not look away.
